Intuitive Eating is the polar opposite of a diet. Essentially, it helps you to connect with your body’s signals of hunger, satiety and fullness. So you can re-discover your natural ability to eat normally again. But does intuitive eating work and is it right for you?
I’ll explain in more detail below and you can decide if intuitive eating is right for you.
So, you’ve tried every diet on the planet, and you’re fed up.
But you’re unsure about what the next step might be. You know in your heart of hearts that you can’t keep dieting, and you can’t continue life with your unhealthy eating habits. So what do you do?
Intuitive eating offers you a way out of this struggle and a way in to a more enjoyable, easier eating life–with a lot less food stress.
But to move from a life of dieting to intuitive eating, you have to take a leap of faith and jump off the cliff into unchartered waters.
Will I gain weight? Maybe.
Will I be able to let go of the inner critic? Yes, it’s possible.
Will I like myself on the other side of this struggle? Yes, I think so.
The hard truth is, there WILL be discomfort whatever way you turn.
Disliking your body whilst cycling in and out of the hope that you will love your body if you only can do better or go harder on the next diet, and maybe temporarily lose some weight, is quite frankly nothing but an exhausting dead-end loop.
Honestly, you only have to look back on how many failed diets you have attempted. You’re your own guinea pig here. Diet’s don’t work! They’re cause of your eating issues.
It doesn’t have to be this way. You deserve more. You deserve better.
Okay, so if dieting doesn’t work, what should you do?
Introducing intuitive eating?
Enter intuitive eating and it’s set of 10 principles created over 20 years ago by two Dietitians.
These principles encourage you to understand your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that occur when engaging in dieting or restrictive eating patterns, that may lead you to become disconnected from your body and food.
In short, it’s a step-by-step guide to an evidence-based way of eating that helps you decide when, what, how and how much to eat, based on what feels good for you, instead of societies expectations of what you should eat.
Importantly, it also encourages you to feel good (or at least neutral) emotionally, mentally and physically about food. No more feeling guilty after eating, imagine!
Therefore, it’s about creating a healthy relationship with food, body AND mind.
So if intuitive eating allows us to eat what we like, when we like, does that mean we can just eat all the time and not be mindful?
No, not all of the time. This is not about reckless abandonment. Some flexible discernment with food is necessary, without it being obsessive.
What it does help you do is get to the bottom of why you want to eat a box of donuts and a tub of ice cream when your boyfriend dumps you. So that next time you feel upset, angry or bored, you know you have the option of either eating donuts or talking to a good friend for support.
As an intuitive eating practitioner, my job is to help you understand how your life experiences, and how your thoughts emotions, and behaviours with food and your weight, link to the way you eat. When you understand why you eat, you can become more aware of your available choices.
The people who find it the most helpful are those who tend to overthink food, eating and their weight. They may have also lost touch with their sense of hunger, fullness and appetite cues, and may be stuck in a dieting mentality.
How do you know if you’re out of touch with your hunger and fullness cues?
- You feel guilty eating certain foods
- You have removed certain foods or whole food groups
- You think and speak of certain foods as “good” or “bad”
- You count calories, macros or points
- You track your food using an app or journal
- You use exercise to offset what you eat
If any of these statements sound like you, it’s highly likely you’re not eating intuitively or listening to your body.
Is Intuitive Eating right for me?
Intuitive Eating is for everyone. But particularly for those with a history of chronic dieting. If any of the statements below resonate, you’re in a place where intuitive eating can help you:
- You want to feel calm, confident and in control with food
- You want to stop thinking about food all the time
- You want to be able to trust your body when it tells you it’s hungry and full
- You want to be able to trust yourself around all foods – even those foods that are “trigger foods”
- You want to be able to eat all foods without any guilt, shame or regret
- You want to learn how to cope with your feelings and life’s ups and downs without using food
- You want to exercise because you enjoy it and it’s good for you, not to burn the calories you eat
- You want to look after yourself and your wellbeing without the obsession.
Does intuitive eating work?
When you start to bring a more mindful and ’embodied’ approach to eating and living in your body (instead of dieting) and start eating enough, eating regularly and eating a wide variety of foods, you can begin to eat intuitively.
Although it sounds simple, intuitive eating can be challenging at first because it involves a lot of deep reflection, self-help work, and eating psychology. For those who want to pursue an intuitive eating approach, there’s often a learning curve involved. It does involve “work” or what I call “self-care”.
Which means you do need to put in some time and energy do to the work. If you only do half the work, you only get half the results. But it is no harder than sticking to a diet and the results are life-long.
It’s absolutely possible to transform your relationship with food and become a normal eater with the right support. I was once in your shoes. Forever riding the diet-binge-weight cycling merry-go-round. If I can get off the ride, so can you!
If this is something that you would like to try and you need personalised guidance, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me here>>
